Queen Victoria Park

By the late 1820s, the parcel was sold to Thomas Clark and Samuel Street, who began the construction of several buildings near the area now called Table Rock on the south end of the future park property.

Samuel Zimmerman, who built his fortune on helping construct the second Welland Canal and the Great Western Railway, then appropriated 52 acres (210,000 m2) of land opposite the American Falls with plans to design an elaborate estate.

Barnett and Davis soon became bitter rivals, as each fiercely attempted to outdo the other with competing stairways down to the lower level of the Horseshoe Falls.

The first suggestion of a park at this site came in 1873 as an idea offered by Edmund Burke Wood, a member of Canadian Parliament, in an effort to quell the criminal element in the area.

A three-member committee was established in 1885,[3] headed by Polish immigrant Sir Casimir Gzowski, who proposed a government-run park encompassing 118 acres (0.48 km2), to be free to the public.

A follow-up report in 1887 warning of "general regret and disappointment" convinced Mowat to push through the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park Act in March, 1887.

Not wanting to ask the Provincial Government for bonds, the Commission granted a licence to the Niagara Falls and Park River Railway to run a rail route from Chippawa to Queenston.

The Commission opened its first greenhouse in 1896 as part of an effort to beautify the park; it had been virtually barren of mature trees when first established.

Oakes Garden Theatre was built on the site and opened in September, 1937, as part of a plan to beautify the entrance into Canada at the Upper Steel Arch Bridge.